A group of politicians in Southeast Asia has urged the governments of the region to immediately begin a search and rescue operation for a boat that has been adrift in the waters off the coasts of Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and India for weeks and is believed to be carrying hundreds of Rohingya refugees.
The allure from the ASEAN Parliamentarians for Common liberties (A-P H R) on Tuesday came as news sources in India said the boat - which could be conveying many exiles including ladies and kids - had floated from the Malacca Waterway and into Indian waters off the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
The satellite coordinates that the stricken boat captain gave to a Rohingya refugee named Mohamed Khan Rezuwan on Sunday during a phone call in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazaar were cited by the Quint news website.
The captain told Rezuwan, whose sister and five-year-old niece are also on the boat, "We are dying here."
Rezuwan told India's The Print newspaper that starvation and dehydration had already caused at least three deaths on the boat.
The situation is extremely worrying. They don't have water or food, he was cited as saying.
When it called for an immediate search and rescue operation earlier in December, the United Nations refugee agency brought the plight of the Rohingya refugees who were on the boat into focus. At that point, the UN office said the "non-secure" boat could be conveying up to 200 individuals, however Indian media reports put the figure at around 160.
The group of legislators from Southeast Asia issued a statement on Tuesday in which they urged other nations in the region as well as members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (A-S-E A-N) to fulfill their humanitarian responsibilities and rescue the people on the boat.
Eva S U N D-A R-I, an A-P H R board member, stated, "It is shameful that a boat filled with men, women, and children in grave danger has been allowed to remain adrift".
She stated, "Neglecting the boat passengers is nothing short of an affront to humanity".
The boat is said to have left Bangladesh at the end of November with the intention of reaching Malaysia. Bangladesh is home to hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees who have fled persecution in their home country, Myanmar
Another boat carrying 104 refugees, including 39 women and 23 children, was rescued by the Sri Lankan navy on Sunday. The UN outcast organization revealed recently that there had been an "emotional" expansion in Rohingya exiles making dangerous boat ventures from Myanmar and Bangladesh to Southeast Asian nations, halfway in view of weakening circumstances in the displaced person camps they are bound to in Myanmar's Rakhine state and Bangladesh's Cox's Bazaar.
The United Nations estimates that between January and November of this year, 1,920 mostly Rohingya people left Myanmar and Bangladesh by sea, compared to just 287 in 2021. The A-P H R stated on Tuesday that Southeast Asian states needed to address the underlying cause of the crisis, which included putting pressure on authorities in Myanmar, which is ruled by the military, to grant Rohingya citizens citizenship and bring the nearly one million refugees who are living in camps in Bangladesh home.
K-A S-I T Piromya, a member of the A-P H R board and a former Thai minister of foreign affairs, stated, "A-S-E A-N and the international community as a whole have stood idly for too long as the Rohingya tragedy unfolded over the years". "Those nations that make the claim that they are protecting human rights have a moral obligation to address the underlying causes of the human rights crisis affecting the Rohingya, or else these humanitarian tragedies will continue to happen repeatedly"
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